In the rugby league heartlands of Sydney’s western suburbs, a football team called the Auburn Tigers has sprung up. The Auburn Tigers are from a variety of backgrounds, mostly Lebanese, and train to a backdrop of the Gallipoli Mosque towers. Against the odds, they were extremely successful, winning the premiership in their first season. However, the guys are not the …

  “In many parts of the Muslim world the war against global terrorism has come to be viewed as a war against Islam and Muslims. The image of America has become that of a neo-imperial power that has sought to redraw the map of the Middle East and the Muslim world, influenced by an unholy alliance of neoconservatives and the …

Both The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post report today that the Obama administration is planning to exploit the disorder from the civil war in Yemen by dramatically escalating a CIA-led drone bombing campaign.  In one sense, this is nothing new.  Contrary to false denials, the U.S., under the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been bombing Yemen for the last two years, including one attack using cluster …

A ferry service from Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka, which was suspended 28 years ago, resumed on Monday. The sea route was thrown open as a private cruise-liner left Thoothukudi in south Tamil Nadu on its maiden voyage to Colombo. The decision to resume the service was taken during the visit of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to India in …

Russia and NATO have an open channel for talks, but there are still fundamental points in which they have trouble seeing eye-to-eye. From how to handle Libya and Syria through to missile defence, the hurdles are clear. To see if that might change any time soon, we can talk to NATO's Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

When Britain lost control of Egypt in 1956, Prime Minister Anthony Eden said he wanted the nationalist president Gamal Abdel Nasser “destroyed … murdered … I don’t give a damn if there’s anarchy and chaos in Egypt”. Those insolent Arabs, Winston Churchill had urged in 1951, should be driven “into the gutter from which they should never have emerged”.  The language …